今日、驚いたのはアルバニアの北部の山岳地帯に住むトランスジェンダーの女性たちについての話である。女が男装して男として生きる人々がいるのね、とＨ先生がipadの写真を見せてくれたのだ。アルバニア北部山岳地帯の慣習の一つのようだ。それにしても驚いた。男性の風貌である。家父長制度の桎梏の中で、男性がいない家の財産などが相続できない状況に対応した一面もあるようだ。女には相続できないゆえに男として育てられた風習もあったようだ。
中世からの風習だという。男性がいない家族が娘を男として是認するシステムはジェンダー差異の大きさゆえだ。男として生きる決断の中に家族を守る義務がある。家父長制の強さが彼女たちを生み出した点は無視できない。
The Virgins. Albania’s Sworn Virgins Who Pursue A True Man’s Path
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDGCehwKBEU
For centuries, a very unusual tradition has been practiced in Albania; women who choose to become burrneshas, or sworn virgins. They become men virtual to represent their families in this deeply patriarchal society. The ancient practice was established under a medieval code of laws known as the ‘Kanun’, which among other things set out the legal framework of everyday life, such as the rules for conducting a blood feud and the roles and responsibilities of men and women. By becoming a burrnesha, a woman gains rights normally reserved only for men, such as the ability to trade and manage the property. She would undertake a man’s work and be expected to take part in blood feuds when needed.ブルネシャになって彼女は男がもっている権利を得ることができた。旅や財産の所有、決闘、喫煙、アルコール等々。中世のカヌンと呼ばれる規範において施行された。
To complete the transformation, a woman had to be a virgin and take an oath of celibacy, making her head of the family but at the same time depriving her of the chance to marry and have her own children. The oath was considered irreversible and breaking it was punishable by death. The tradition is fading away these days, with only a few dozen burrneshas remaining in Albania, predominantly in the remote highlands.
Each one has a similar story: most had no option but to take the oath at a young age following the death of their brothers. They rejected femininity with their dress and how they presented themselves and were, in return, granted the social status of men. RT Doc travelled to remote Albanian villages to meet the last of burrneshas and ask how living someone else’s life worked out but finding sworn virgins willing to talk became an adventure in itself. SUBSCRIBE TO RTD Channel to get documentaries firsthand!女性のジェンダー役割を捨て、男性としてのステイタスを得る。
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Albanian sworn virgins＝Burnesha
The Albanian sworn virgins (Albanian: burrnesha) are Albanian women who take a vow of chastity and wear male clothing in order to live as men in the patriarchal northern Albanian society. National Geographic's Tabooestimated that there are fewer than 102 sworn virgins in the world.[1]
Other terms for the sworn virgin include vajzë e betuar (most common today, and used in situations in which the parents make the decision when the girl is a baby or child), mashkull (present-day, used around Shkodra), virgjineshë, virgjereshë, verginesa, virgjin, vergjinesha, Albanian virgin, avowed virgin, sadik (Turkish: honest, just).[2]
Origins
The tradition of sworn virgins in Albania developed out of the Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit (English: The Code of Lekë Dukagjini, or simply the Kanun),[3] a set of codes and laws developed by Lekë Dukagjini and used mostly in northern Albania and Kosovo from the 15th century until the 20th century. The Kanun is not a religious document – many groups follow it, including Albanian Orthodox, Catholics and Muslims.[4]
The Kanun dictates that families must be patrilineal (meaning wealth is inherited through a family's men) and patrilocal (upon marriage, a woman moves into the household of her husband's family).[5] Women are treated like property of the family. Under the Kanun women are stripped of many rights. They cannot smoke, wear a watch, or vote in their local elections. They cannot buy land, and there are many jobs they are not permitted to hold. There are also establishments that they cannot enter.[4][6]
The practice of sworn virginhood was first reported by missionaries, travelers, geographers and anthropologists who visited the mountains of northern Albania in the 19th and early 20th centuries.[7]
Overview
A woman becomes a sworn virgin by swearing an irrevocable oath, in front of twelve village or tribal elders, to practice celibacy. Then she is allowed to live as a man and may dress in male clothes, use a male name, carry a gun, smoke, drink alcohol, take on male work, act as the head of a household (for example, living with a sister or mother), play music and sing, and sit and talk socially with men.[6][7][8]
A woman can become a sworn virgin at any age, either to satisfy her parents or herself.[9]
The sworn virgin is believed to be the only formal, socially defined trans masculine transgender and cross-dressing role in Europe. Similar practices occurred in some societies of indigenous peoples of the Americas.[7]
Breaking the vow was once punishable by death, but it is doubtful that this punishment is still carried out.[6] Many sworn virgins today still refuse to go back on their oath because their community would reject them for breaking the vows.[6] However, it is sometimes possible to take back the vows if the sworn virgin has finished her obligations to the family and the reasons or motivations which lead her to take the vow no longer exist.
Motivations
There are many reasons why a woman would have wanted to take this vow, and observers have recorded a variety of motivations. One woman said she became a sworn virgin in order to not be separated from her father, and another in order to live and work with her sister. Several were recorded as saying they always felt more male than female. Some hoped to avoid a specific unwanted marriage, and others hoped to avoid marriage in general.
Becoming a sworn virgin was the only way for women whose families had committed them as children to an arranged marriage to refuse to fulfil it, without dishonouring the groom's family and risking gjakmarrja (blood feud). It was the only way a woman could inherit her family's wealth, which was particularly important in a society in which blood feuds resulted in the deaths of many male Albanians, leaving many families without male heirs. (However, anthropologist Mildred Dickemann suggests this motive may be "over-pat", pointing out that a non-child-bearing woman would have no heirs to inherit after her, and also that in some families not one but several daughters became sworn virgins, and in others the later birth of a brother did not end the sworn virgin's masculine role.[8]) It is also likely that many women chose to become sworn virgins simply because it afforded them much more freedom than would otherwise have been available in a patrilineal culture in which women were secluded, sex-segregated, required to be virgins before marriage and faithful afterwards, betrothed as children and married by sale without their consent, continually bearing and raising children, constantly physically labouring, and always required to defer to men, particularly their husbands and fathers, and submit to being beaten.[4][7][8][10]
Sworn virgins could also participate in blood feuds. If a sworn virgin was killed in a blood feud her death counted as a full life for the purposes of calculating blood money, rather than the half a life ordinarily accorded for a female death.[11]
Dickemann suggests their mothers may have played an important role in persuading women to become sworn virgins. A widow without sons has traditionally had few options in Albania: she could return to her birth family, stay on as a servant in the family of her deceased husband, or remarry. With a son or surrogate son, she could live out her life in the home of her adulthood, in the company of her child. Murray quotes testimony recorded by René Gremaux: "Because if you get married I'll be left alone, but if you stay with me, I'll have a son." On hearing those words Djurdja [the daughter] "threw down her embroidery" and became a man.[8]
Prevalence
The practice has died out in Dalmatia and Bosnia, but is still carried out in northern Albania and to a lesser extent in Macedonia.[7]
The Socialist People's Republic of Albania did not encourage women to become sworn virgins. Women started gaining legal rights and came closer to having equal social status, especially in the central and southern regions. It is only in the northern region that many families are still traditionally patriarchal.[12] Currently there are between forty and several hundred sworn virgins left in Albania, and a few in neighboring countries. Most are over fifty years old.[4] It used to be believed that the sworn virgins had all but died out after 50 years of communism in Albania, but recent research suggests that may not be the case;[7] instead, the increase in feuding following the collapse of the communist regime could encourage a resurgence of the practice.[8]
In popular culture
- Virdzina, a 1991 Yugoslav film based on this old custom was directed by Srđan Karanović.[13][14]
- Italian director Laura Bispuri's first feature film, Sworn Virgin, released in 2015, depicts the life of Hana, played by Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher.[15] The film is based on the novel of the same name by Albanian writer Elvira Dones.[6]
- American writer Kristopher Dukes's first novel, "The Sworn Virgin," published in 2017, follows an untraditional young woman in the mountains of 1910 Albania, as her father is gunned down due to an old blood feud, and she takes the vow to avoid an arranged marriage. [16]
